This disclosure relates to a gas turbine engine, and more particularly to a gas turbine engine component having an internal cooling circuit. The internal cooling circuit may include one or more respirating pedestals configured to create a convection sink to cool an area of the component.
Gas turbine engines typically include a compressor section, a combustor section and a turbine section. During operation, air is pressurized in the compressor section and is mixed with fuel and burned in the combustor section to generate hot combustion gases. The hot combustion gases are communicated through the turbine section, which extracts energy from the hot combustion gases to power the compressor section and other gas turbine engine loads.
Because they are commonly exposed to hot combustion gases, many gas turbine engine components employ internal cooling circuits that channel a dedicated cooling fluid for cooling regions of the component. Thermal energy is transferred from the component to the cooling fluid to convectively cool the component. Some cooling circuits employ film cooling holes that return a portion of the cooling fluid to the gas path as a layer of film that protects the component against the relatively harsh environment of the gas path.